This description relates to online content, and, more particularly, to a method and system for enhancing sitelinks provided by an online content provider and displayed by an online search provider, wherein the enhancement includes adding relevant creative text to the sitelinks.
When an online user performs an online search, an online search provider will provide primary search results to the online user. In addition to the primary search results, the online search provider may also provide additional content to the online user. This additional content may be provided by the online content providers associated with the websites included within the search results. For example, a first search result may include a first or primary website associated with a first online content provider. The first online content provider may have a plurality of potential items of additional or secondary content, incorporating different landing pages that are related or otherwise relevant to the search specified by the online user.
To make the additional or secondary content available to the online user, the online content provider may choose to provide additional links to the items of additional or secondary content in the form of sitelinks, which can be presented to the online user in addition to the first or primary result(s) of the search. By providing such sitelinks, the online user, who may be more interested in one of the items of additional or secondary content, can directly view the item of additional or secondary content with a single click. Sitelinks have proven to be very successful in providing such additional or secondary content to online users. However, for some kinds of online searches, in which the search terms are very broad, the sitelinks, by themselves, may not provide enough information, or the most relevant information, to the online user, so as to prompt the online user to click on the sitelink. As a result, opportunities for presenting additional or secondary content to online users may be missed. Specifically, the online user may not click on any of the sitelinks provided, or may not reach the sitelink most relevant to the search specified by the user with a single click. As click counts are important to online content providers, the loss of clicks is an undesirable outcome. In addition, failure to provide the online user with the most relevant search result is also an undesirable outcome.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a method for matching creative texts to sitelinks to additional or secondary content for presentation to an online user in such a way that the resulting combinations of sitelinks and creative texts are more relevant to the search specified by the online user.